EVENT HORIZON 18
Sight-mare scenario…
1997 ★★★★☆ OUT NOW DUAL FORMAT
EXTRAS ★★★★☆ Commentaries, Making Of, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Memorabilia
Aflop on its original cinema release 25 years ago, Paul W.S. Anderson’s film reemerged on video as a cult favourite. It’s withstood the barrage of time with a grace belying the brutal scars of both its characters and its own tortured, rushed birth.
Written by Philip Eisner (Mutant Chronicles), the plot sees Captain Miller’s (Laurence Fishburne) space-rescue squad escort Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill, on forceful, peak-horror form) to a Gothic creation that wears its influences with pride. An experimental interstellar ship with an artificial black hole for an engine, gone for seven years, is back, with a new (ahem) life force on board. This mysterious (double ahem) alien presence starts to torment each crew member via visions of their individual haunted pasts.
As its magnificently overqualified cast hurtles down corridors filled with jump scares, high-tension dread, meat-grinder-like magnetic fields and blood-soaked mutilations, Event Horizon’s sheer velocity offsets its BTS compromises. Plot points are dropped, and the promise of a “world beyond our universe” goes unfulfilled (though the masterful production design offers ample compensation). However, those scars have become part of the film’s charm, a fact dissected among the abundant (albeit not new) extras in this 4K UHD Steelbook release.
THE VERDICT Flawed but audacious, Event Horizon is as magnetic as ever. Still Paul W.S. Anderson’s finest hour.